Tobias Tells Ax
by AniJen21
Summary: Implicitly obvious, I hope. We never discovered just how Ax found out that his greatly admired mentor and brother caved into cowardice and fled to Earth to be with the woman he loved-how will he take it when he finds out? R/R, thanks!


**A/N: I just wanted to write this because it never cropped up in any of the books and I thought it would be nice. Obviously K.A. could have done it better than me, but hey, that's what fan-fic's all about.  
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Tobias

It was dusk in the meadow, and kind of a cold one at that. I was a little restless. It had only been a week since that lawyer, DeGroot, had read my father's final message to his only son. It had taken a while to sink in, and even now, I wasn't really sure that it had.

See, I had been confused for a long time. It's a problem I spend a lot of time worrying about. After our first real battle as Animorphs, I became stuck in morph as a red-tailed hawk. I became what the Andalites called a _nothlit_. Since then, I wasn't really sure what I was—was I more human? I could read, think, reason, love. Or was I more hawk? I killed innocent, cute baby animals for food, I rode glorious thermals for fun, I protected my little meadow from invading predators. I could sink into the hawk's brain and get lost there forever, but the human mind was always there to pull me back out.

Now, I was something else too.

I wasn't even hunting, but Ax came thromping into the meadow, scattering a small family of field mice that my hawk brain had been concentrated on quite intently.

(Jeez, Ax, you could give me some warning. You scared away my dinner.)

(My dearest apologies, Tobias. I will call out next time I desire a visit.)

(No, no, it's all right. I'm just a little…) I couldn't find the words. I felt a little stressed out that he had come to see me. It would be fair to say I had been avoiding him for a while.

Prince Elfangor, the dying Andalite prince who had given five human kids the power to morph and died to protect them, was my father.

And that meant Ax, his kid brother, was my uncle.

He didn't know that yet.

(So, um, how are you, anyway?) I asked, ignoring the progress of my last statement. (I haven't talked to you in a while.)

(Yes, I have missed your company. In times of loneliness, I turn to human television for conversational engagement, but the likelihood of some of your television is outlandish.)

(You've been watching soap operas again, haven't you?)

(A shrink ray could never be used to hold a wealthy family hostage,) he said, shaking his stalk eyes in disbelief. (Certainly the decay of that technology would cause the family to regain their previous height within days, the half-life of that radiation is--)

(Ax, it's just TV.)

He didn't answer. He twitched his tail blade a little. He gazed around the field with his stalk eyes, watching the sun set over the horizon.

(The temperature has dropped significantly in the past few weeks,) he said. (Earth has much more volatile seasonal shifts than the Andalite homeworld.)

He watched me with a stalk eye. I got the vague, paranoid suspicion that he knew I was holding out on him, baiting me by talking about his home, but I had to bite.

(What's your homeworld like, Ax?)

(It is like Earth. And unlike Earth.)

I sighed a little in relief. Not exactly the kind of statement you would give if you were trying to get someone to cave.

(What season is it there now?)

(Where I am from, it would be spring.)

(So do Andalite springs have April showers, May flowers, the whole thing?)

(Not exactly. It remains temperate enough on the homeworld to sustain most plant life year-round. Spring brings the awakening of guide trees, the festival of fertility, and the landscape engineering competitions that many Andalite females spend months preparing for.)

(That doesn't sound too different,) I said. (What did your family do in spring?)

It was an awkward transition. He may have noticed. I was worried, but I really had no reason to be. Ax was a good guy. He considered me his _shorm_, which I guess means "best friend." We were good roommates, even though our "room" was about 100 acres worth of forest and grassland.

(My family?) He asked. He seemed a little taken aback. (I…I do not know what they are doing.)

(I'm sorry, if you don't want to talk about them, it's cool.)

(Perhaps they are distracting themselves with local pastimes. My father was often invited to judge the engineering tournaments. My mother did not usually engage in such frivolity, not with a war on.)

His stalk eye looked away. I didn't mean to hurt his feelings.

(They're probably really worried about you,) I said. (I know my parents would be, if I…)

I trailed off again. That was not exactly where I wanted the conversation to go. We both stood in awkward silence for a while as the sun disappeared completely from view.

(Tobias, since I frightened away your dinner, and I have been feeling rather intense cravings for the human food item "cheese sticks," would you like to go to the local human food manufacturer, Applebees, and procure some with me?)

I laughed a little. (Sure, Ax. That sounds good.)

I gave Ax a little time to put on some acceptable clothes that were tight enough to morph. In the meantime, I felt the weight on my chest of unfulfilled responsibility. It wasn't just that Ax deserved to know, and that I was too chicken to tell him, it was the amount of stuff _I_ wanted to know. Ax had known Elfangor for years. And of course the other Animorphs and I had always been curious about Elfangor, what kind of kid and brother he was, what made him into the heroic prince he had died as, but now I felt something a little more personal. A little more urgent. Sure, he had invited us into the hell of war, and the terror of responsibility, peeling away that comfortable ignorance that really was bliss, but he had given us a gift that none of us could deny, not even our more outspoken skeptic. He'd given us the power to morph, and from that gift developed the curiosity we all shared.

But now there was something else. He'd given me something even more. He was my father. Without him, I wouldn't exist.

So I flew with Ax to Applebee's, and got ready to play the part of unwilling babysitter to get the information I wanted. Ax got a little weird around human food.

We sat in a booth in the back corner of the restaurant. It was mostly empty, since it was like a Thursday or something. Tuesday? Well, either way, it wasn't a weekend, so the restaurant was peppered mostly with low-end white collar workers at the bar and bored wait staff hovering around the kitchen. Ax gulped down Coke after Coke as we waited for our cheese sticks to arrive.

"If only there was a substance like this back home! A way to drink it constantly! Never needing refill, never needing pause!" He mused as he tipped the end of a glass against his lips, ice cubes hitting his face and spilling out to the floor. I sighed, deciding to change the subject.

"So, anyway, I thought we could talk a little bit more about your homew—your, uh, home. Your mother was a big supporter of the war?"

Ax looked up at me, mouth unwilling to let go of the straw. "Is this the wisest environment to discuss this in? Zuh. Izzie. Izizizieee."

"Well, I don't know, I don't think the Yeerks have bugged the Applebee's, and it's pretty quiet in here."

"My mother only supported the war when Elf—when my older brother decided to join it."

"That must have been hard for them, letting go of one of their sons."

"I was not born yet. He was their only son."

"Oh, right. So he already had some experience when you were born. That must have been helpful, learning all of that stuff from him."

Ax pulled the straw out of his mouth and looked at me for a while. "Elfangor was not home when I was born."

"Oh. I guess I just assumed…I mean, he must have been off fighting Yeerks, right?"

"Perhaps. There is a period in Elfangor's service record that is unaccounted for."

"Really?" I asked, perking up a little. "What was he doing during that time?"

"I do not know, Tobias. How much longer until the human in the black shirt brings us our delicious, fried cheese sticks?"

"Ax, this is important," I growled, suddenly very impatient and angry. Ax let go of his cup and looked at me with narrowed eyes.

"Your sudden curiosity about Elfangor is strange, Tobias," he whispered. "What has caused it?"

"I…I don't know, I just never thought about him before, you know? I mean, he gave us the power to morph, he brought us into the war, I guess I just want to know what kind of person he was. And you were his little brother, so I just thought you'd be the best person to ask."

Ax looked troubled in a way that was more Andalite than human. His main eyes were narrowed and still, his nostrils were flared, his lips were pursed. He tapped his foot impatiently on the ground.

"Elfangor disappeared from service for five years," Ax explained. "By the time he returned, he was enough of a hero that Andalite central command ignored it. My father did not."

"What happened?"

"Elfangor did not visit home frequently, Tobias. Until I was old enough to enter the service, he only came home once or twice a season. Andalite seasons last a little less than three times the length of yours. When he did, his attempts to evade questioning and scrutiny from my family were successful. Except once.

"Elfangor had been gravely injured in a space battle not long before a visit home one winter. According to some news reports, he died for three minutes. I was home for those three minutes. I did not recognize my parents during them. It was not a fresh grief, not a surprise. It was like they had been expecting it, or repeating it. I realized it had to do with the five years he had been missing. Surely he hadn't communicated with them during that time. He had gone on a dangerous mission directly before. They had assumed he had died in service. My mother often called the times he came home since then as 'borrowed.' I suppose I did not understand it, then."

Ax was talking a lot. It surprised me. He was usually so direct, to-the-point. I guess I had caught him at a weak moment. Homesick. Vulnerable. I didn't stop him and apologize for manipulating him. I felt a little guilty, but not that guilty.

"He came home, as usual. He greeted me by grasping my shoulder, touched tail blades with my father, kissed my mother. The grief still invaded their eyes. They were filled with a determination I did not know. They did not say anything until we got home, but then they teamed up against him with more resolve and expertise than I could have predicted.

"'Where did you go, Elfangor?' My mother asked. 'Why did you leave for so long?'

"'We've stayed silent about it long enough,' my father joined in. 'It is our right to know. You are our son. We are your elders. We cared for you, loved you. We deserve your respect.'

"I did not speak during this time. They were loud, yelling. I merely watched. 'I cannot tell you,' Elfangor replied. 'I mean no disrespect, but I cannot say.'

"'You nearly died, son. You nearly perished, but you had died before. We mourned you for five years. How do you expect us to ignore that dark period in our lives?' My mother asked.

"He kissed her, then, on the cheek, and she nearly relented. My father took this as a cue to strengthen his own resolve.

"'I demand that you tell me what happened to you, so that I know it won't happen again,' my Father said.

"'It won't,' he responded, and even I could sense the grief in his voice, the regret. It was so strange, Tobias. I had no idea what he had to be so sad about. He was a hero, the greatest warrior in years. Everyone looked up to him, but he did not care. There was no deserved pride in his hearts.

"'Tell me, then, so I can be assured.' My father said. Elfangor did something terrible then. Unforgivable by Andalite law. He put his tail blade against my father's throat.

"'I cannot tell you what happened to me, Father. I cannot reveal this truth. It is nothing I owe you. I am here, I am your son. Forgive me for this secret.' It wasn't a request. Elfangor had grown strong in the war." Ax stopped talking then, trying to melt down the remaining ice in his cup with his straw. He looked distant and thoughtful.

"Wow," I said. I felt something cold crawl down my cheek. I was crying a little.

"Are you all right, Tobias? You seem to be leaking."

"Yeah, I'm good, I'm all right. Did he ever tell you where he was?"

"I never asked," Ax said. The waitress put down the cheese sticks, and Ax picked one up, dragging it slowly through the marinara sauce. He seemed to have lost his appetite. "I did not want to be decapitated. I looked up to Elfangor, but he intimidated me."

"Ax, I…" I started. I felt the weight crush down on my chest some more. Ax was making the cheese stick dance, watching me closely.

"You have reasons for these questions," he said.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I know where Elfangor was during that time."

Ax's face collapsed into something like a smile. It was a very human reaction. Mostly doubtful and skeptical, but I could see a little bit of hope and curiosity. "Where did you learn this information?"

"At the reading of my father's last will and testament. I—"

Ax dropped the cheese stick into the marinara sauce. "Hah. Hah. Hahaha. You believe this human lawyer knew Elfangor's location? You believe Earth had something to—"

"Ax, Elfangor was my dad," I spat. The weight on my chest released, and my stomach twisted in knots. I looked away. I was a little embarrassed. I hadn't planned a speech or anything, but I guess I had expected a little more build-up than that.

After a few heavy seconds, Ax said, "Forgive me if I am mistaken, Tobias, but 'Dad' on Earth means 'Father,' correct?"

"Yeah," I said too quietly, coughing. "Yeah."

Ax picked up the cheese stick again and tapped the dry end against his chin. "You believe an Andalite is your father."

"I know it doesn't really make sense, but—"

"Well, it is entirely impossible, from a genetic standpoint. Human and Andalite DNA wouldn't mix, and even if it would, it would make you into a hybrid, not a human boy."

"He became a human, Ax. He fell in love with my mom and lived on Earth, as a human."

"That seems unlikely," Ax said. "Elfangor was proud to be Andalite. That is a law he would not break."

"What's even more unlikely is that you and I are sitting here, rehashing it, separated by cheese sticks," I said. "I just…I'm sorry I didn't tell you until now. I guess I was having trouble accepting it, too."

Ax sat for a while, looking somewhere else, tapping the cheese stick against his chin. He dropped it in the marinara sauce. "I am no longer hungry," he said.

"I'm sorry," I repeated.

"Elfangor would not do that. Elfangor would not abandon his people. I cannot understand how you believe this is true."

"I don't know. It's kind of hard, having the weight of the world on your shoulders, you know? I mean, look at us. Six kids fighting an entire, alien army. Don't you just want to curl up in a ball, sometimes, run away, not worry about it?" I closed my eyes after finishing. A stupid thing to say. Honor and duty were Ax's two favorite obligations.

I opened my eyes. Ax looked dangerous, brave. He bit his bottom lip. "Yes. I feel that way often."

I was a little shocked. I looked up at him, and his face had softened into acceptance. I guess it's hard to admit that your hero is full of faults like fear and exhaustion and cowardice. Especially if said hero is dead and can't defend himself.

I still felt bad on the flight back to the forest. It was dark now, and we used our silent, prowling owl morphs for speed. Ax and I didn't say anything as we flew. I wanted to give him a little time to think about it.

We landed at Ax's scoop and demorphed. It wasn't much of a change from owl to hawk. It was a much more significant change from owl to Andalite.

I was about to fly away for the night when Ax stopped me.

(Tobias, I spent a long time wondering what happened to Elfangor during that time. I realized the disruption it had on my family. I spent the first few years of my life without a mentor, without a guide. They were difficult years. I wished that he would return so I could have someone close. A friend. A _shorm_.)

(Well, I'm sorry that-)

(I am not upset about it anymore, Tobias. I am glad Elfangor found happiness, even for a limited time. And I am glad that you are here. Elfangor returned eventually, and I had a _shorm_. But I am glad that I still do, even now.)

I wanted to smile, but it's hard with a beak. (Yeah. I'm glad too.)

(I wish to teach you about your heritage, if you are obliged,) Ax said. (Not tonight, however. Let us wait until tomorrow.)

(Good night, Uncle Ax,) I said. I don't know why. It sounded strange, but it seemed right.

(Good night, nephew.)


End file.
